Trash Course

by Penny Drake

  I did, but said, “No, thanks,” partly out of principle and partly out of respect for my thighs. Cherry cheesecake last night and doughnuts this morning—I’d been pushing it.

  “Suit yourself,” he said, and sank his teeth into a round pastry that oozed red jelly. “You gonna call Belinda and the cops? They’ll both want to know about this, even though the cops probably won’t actually do anything.”

  To my chagrin, I realized he was right. Even if the police did nothing but file a report, they had to be alerted. And Belinda needed an update. I’d already entered the number of her hotel into my cell phone, and she picked up almost immediately.

  “Thank heavens you called,” she said before I could launch into an explanation. “I just heard from the medical examiner’s office, and the police are on their way to the house right now.”

  I blinked at that. “How did you know?”

  “Know what?”

  “That someone broke into the house early this morning.”

  “Someone broke in?” Belinda squeaked.

  “Isn’t that why you called the police?”

  “I didn’t call the police. They called me. Who broke in?”

  We were repeating questions to each other without answering them, and both of us were just getting more confused. “Let me go first,” I said, and told her what we’d found in the house, including the fact that we’d chased the intruder and lost him—or her. Belinda greeted this news with momentary silence.

  “Oh dear,” she said at last. “I wonder if the intruder killed that poor man.”

  “What poor man?” I asked. “Ms. Harris, please explain.”

  “Of course, of course.” I imagined her sitting in her hotel room, an inhaler on the night stand, her sun dress neatly pressed by a hotel iron. “The medical examiner put the autopsies on the fast track because of the advanced decomposition of both bodies. Uncle Howard was pretty…pretty far gone, you understand, and they’re still working on a cause of death for him.”

  “All right,” I said, trying not to show my impatience to a client. “And Uncle Lawrence?”

  “That’s the main reason the medical examiner called me,” Belinda said. “The medical examiner told me the man crushed under all those magazines was definitely not my uncle.”

  Chapter Seven

  Belinda gave me what details she had. Once the medical examiner, Karen Wilewski, had gotten the body into good light at the morgue, she had instantly realized it didn’t belong to Uncle Lawrence. The dead man was far too young, in his mid-forties or so. He had no identification on him, so they had no idea who he was, yet.

  This revelation opened up a whole mess of possibilities, and my mind tore through them like a weasel ripping through a chicken coop. If the body wasn’t Uncle Lawrence, that could mean the old man was still alive somewhere. Maybe he was the intruder Zack and I had almost caught. It would certainly explain how he got around the traps and knew there was a trapdoor in the bike room. On the other hand, why would he ransack his own house? Or sneak around inside it? Maybe Uncle Lawrence had been kidnapped by someone who wanted the same thing Zack was looking for. Or maybe they were looking for something else entirely.

  All this flashed through my mind as Belinda’s voice continued over my cell phone.

  “Dr. Wilewski said the man—whoever he is—hadn’t actually been crushed to death, you understand. He had died of suffocation. The magazines were so heavy that he couldn’t inhale. Can you imagine?” Belinda paused, and I got the impression she was shuddering. An asthma sufferer probably had more nightmares about suffocation than your average person. “Dr. Wilewski wouldn’t tell me more than that, since I’m not related to the dead man.” A note of hope suffused her voice. “Do you think Uncle Lawrence is alive somewhere?”

  “We need to keep our minds open.” I learned long ago that it’s a bad idea to say you think something might be possible. Clients usually take that to mean “Yes, definitely.”

  Zack, meanwhile, was dying of curiosity. He danced back and forth as if he had to go to the bathroom. I waved at him to calm down. He made a face. At that moment, sirens ripped through the quiet air. Cops on the way. Zack whipped his head around, startled. I plugged my free ear with a finger and turned my attention back to the phone.

  “Would you keep looking, then?” Belinda was asking. “I need to know what’s going on.”

  “Of course, Ms. Harris,” I said. “We’ll stay on this as long as you like.”

  “I have to go get my bike,” Zack said.

  I waved him off and asked Belinda if she had gotten any other information from the M.E.’s office, and Belinda told me she hadn’t. We clicked off just as a black-and-white came cruising down the driveway, lights flashing like a rock concert stage. At least they had shut the sirens off. A plain blue sedan followed. Four doors swung open and four people got out—two uniformed cops and two plainclothes detectives. I gave them a cheery wave. The cops were the same ones who had responded yesterday, when we had found the bodies. I never did catch their names—Ms. Hawk had dealt with them. The two detectives, however, I knew well. The first was Henrietta Flinch, a former client. Her ex-husband had fallen behind on the child-support payments, and Hawk Enterprises had…arranged for him to catch up. Henrietta had already paid back the favors she owed Ms. Hawk, but we remained on friendly terms. The same couldn’t be said about her partner, Carl dela Cort. My jaw tightened when I saw him.

  Henrietta and Carl headed in my direction while the two officers got out big rolls of yellow tape. They started unrolling the stuff, setting off a boundary around the house. Frustration pulled my eyebrows together. Great. Now that the place was a crime scene, I wouldn’t be allowed back in. I felt sorry for whoever was assigned to gather physical evidence inside, though.

  “Terry!” Henrietta sang out as she approached. Her blue pantsuit complemented her whipcord figure and fair skin, and she wore her shiny black hair in a twist. “What are you doing here? I thought you and Ms. Hawk had cleared out yesterday.”

  “Our client wanted us to examine the house some more,” I replied. “So I came back this morning.”

  “Coroner says the poor bastard who died in all those magazine wasn’t one of the old guys who lived here,” Carl said. He was a powerfully built man who clearly spent hours in the gym, and his starched white shirt bulged like a sack of footballs. Henrietta had once told me Carl had his work clothes tailored to show off every contour. That seemed to be the case—I could almost tell his religion by glancing at his crotch. His face might have been handsome in a blocky, square sort of way if it weren’t screwed into a permanent sneer. “How are you involved in this shit?”

  I shook my head. “I wasn’t involved in the guy’s death, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Oh ho!” He looked me up and down, and his gaze stopped at my chest. “What makes you think I was talking about the dead man—what was his name again?” I rolled my eyes. The guy’s interview technique was as subtle as a barrel of toxic waste.

  “I have no idea, Carl,” I said. “My boobs don’t know, either.”

  He flushed red at that. “Listen, girlie—all I know is that whenever there’s some kind of trouble in this town, you and that Hawk lady are Janie-on-the-fucking-spot. Looks damn suspicious, you ask me.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said vaguely, knowing full well I wasn’t going to be a suspect anywhere except in Carl’s piggy little mind. “Look, Henrietta, our client—”

  “Belinda Harris,” she supplied. “The M.E. told us.”

  I nodded. So much for confidentiality. “Right. Anyway, back when we all thought that both Howard and Lawrence Peale were dead, Ms. Harris—next of kin—asked Hawk Enterprises to go through the house and look for various legal documents. Zack and I went in this morning and saw the place had been ransacked.”

  “Zack?” Henrietta said.

  “You got a boyfriend?” Carl said. “Good God. I thought Diana Hawk had you batting for the other team.”

  “He’s mor
e your type than mine, Detective,” I said before I could stop myself. “Don’t you go for blonds?”

  Carl’s reaction rather surprised me. He clamped his lips into a white line and said nothing. Hmmmm. I filed that one away for later.

  “Who’s Zack?” Henrietta asked.

  “Zack Archer,” I said. “He’s a photographer.” I sketched out a brief explanation of his involvement and how we knew the house had been ransacked.

  “And where is this Zack guy now?” Carl asked.

  I was wondering that myself. “He said he had to go get his bike.”

  “Anything else you can tell us, Terry?” Henrietta asked. “Either from today or from yesterday, when you found the body?”

  “No, nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “Have you ever been inside?”

  It was Henrietta’s turn to shake her head. “Never had the pleasure. I’ve heard rumors about booby traps, though. Looks like they were true.”

  “Yeah. I’m guessing it’s what killed that guy.” A thought struck me. “How did the owners pay their property taxes and stuff like that? I can’t imagine either of them had jobs.”

  “Oh, this place has been on the department’s crapola list forever,” Henrietta said. “Twice in the last year we’ve gotten court orders to seize the house for non-payment of debts, but no one was able to get inside to evict the owners. And then they came up with enough money to hold off their creditors. Last-minute stuff, you know.”

  “Weird. So where’d they get the money from?” I wondered aloud.

  “We’ll ask the questions here,” Carl said.

  Just to annoy him, I said to Henrietta, “How long will this place be a crime scene? I’ll need to tell Ms. Harris how long it’ll be before I can go back in.”

  “It’ll stay a crime scene as long as we say it does,” Carl growled.

  “Well, back when we thought the body belonged to Lawrence Peale, we figured he had died by accident. Now we have to look a little more closely, check for foul play,” Henrietta said. “It may take a while. And if Lawrence Peale is still alive somewhere, we’ll want to talk to him. You wouldn’t know where to find him, by chance?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I do wonder if he was the intruder—I never did get a look at the person—but that raises more questions. Why would Uncle Lawrence sneak around his own house? Or trash the place?”

  “I told you,” Carl said. He hawked and spat. “They were fucking loony.”

  Henrietta shot me a sympathetic look that said, He may annoy you, but I have to work with him every day. She definitely had the short end of the deal.

  We exchanged cards, and Henrietta told me to call night or day if I thought of anything else.

  “And don’t leave town, lady,” Carl said.

  My annoyance blew into outrage. “Am I a suspect in a crime, Detective? Are you planning to charge me with anything? If the answer is ‘no,’ then I’ll go where I damn well please, and no petty pin-dick dictator with a badge is going to tell me otherwise. You got that?”

  “I think we’re all set here, actually,” Henrietta put in loudly before Carl could reply. “You can head on home, or wherever you need to go. Thanks, Terry.”

  I stomped away, feeling Carl’s eyes on my back—and probably my ass. I hopped into my Jeep and drove home, still fuming. All the other boarders were out for the day, and the Biemers were both cleaning upstairs, so I had the first floor to myself. For the second time in two days, I peeled off sweaty, dust-laden clothes and took a cool, refreshing shower. Anger at Carl dela Cort’s attitude continued to bubble inside me. I took a deep breath as the water washed over my body and imagined the anger as dirt that swirled down the drain. Carl was an idiot, not worth the energy. He would love it if he knew I was thinking about him, so I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Nor would I wonder where Zack had disappeared to. Water, dust, and anger went down the drain with little sucking sounds, and I emerged from the shower feeling much better. The comfortingly domestic drone of a vacuum cleaner running upstairs calmed me even further.

  A bit later, I was dressed in fresh khakis, a polo shirt, and tennis shoes. I snagged my phone and my laptop—both indispensable on any research trip. The next stop, however, would be lunch, and I knew exactly what I wanted.

  Blimpy Burger is situated a little ways north of State Street and is actually in a mostly residential district. The blocky little building is partly brick and partly painted homey yellow. Two big picnic tables occupy a front porch shaded by an enormous maple tree. Since it’s so far away from downtown, it’s usually easy to grab a metered parking space on the street, and that’s what I did. The sign out front says “Blimpy Burger: Cheaper Than Food,” and you can smell the burgers frying before you even hit the door. I inhaled appreciatively as I stepped inside.

  The inside of Blimpy’s hasn’t changed in nearly sixty years. It’s furnished with fifties-style Formica counters and chairs, chipped and battered but clean. One wall is taken up by the grill, in front of which runs a long counter. During lunch rush, they’ll have as many as three people at the grill, all dressed in spotted white aprons, but by now the last of the lunch crowd had faded away. Only four people waited in line, and six sat at the tables. Hamburger hissed on the grill, and fries sizzled in hot oil. I smelled melting cheese and onions, and my mouth watered.

  As an experienced Blimpy Burger-eater, I knew the drill. I grabbed a tray, put a bottle of Coke on it from the nearby cooler, and glanced at the whiteboard menu above the grill. Blimpy’s has never heard of a single—the smallest burger is a double, and they’ll pile up to five patties on your bun. I usually opt for just a double, but I deserved a treat after this morning. When it came my turn to order, I said, “Fries, please. Then hit me with a triple.”

  “You got it,” said the cook, a woman with a Jamaican accent and her hair all in braids. She dropped a basket of fries into the fryer, then plucked three balls of ground beef from a pan and squashed them flat on the grill. They hissed deliciously.

  While I waited for my burger to cook, my mind wandered inevitably back to the mansion. If Uncle Lawrence hadn’t been crushed under Magazine Mountain, who had been? And how long had he been there? Long enough for the body to start decaying, obviously, but that wouldn’t take long in summer heat. Was the guy a trespasser who had fallen victim to a trap or an invited guest who had met an accident? The latter possibility intrigued me. Uncle Lawrence had invited Zack into the house. Who was to say he hadn’t invited other people? Zack might not be the only one Uncle Lawrence wanted to show something to.

  I shook my head. That didn’t feel right. I got the distinct impression that talking to Zack had been a major step for Uncle Lawrence. Someone who had lived as a recluse for decades wouldn’t break that pattern easily or lightly. But that left the question of who the magazine guy was. Had he been working with whoever had tossed the house this morning? Or the intruder we had chased? It was still too hard to say.

  “What kind of cheese you want, hon?” the cook asked over her shoulder.

  “Provolone.”

  The cook skillfully alternated slabs of meat with slices of cheese and passed the stack down to the sandwich station, where another worker added ketchup, mustard, and pickles at my request. In a few seconds, I had a paper-wrapped cheeseburger and a pile of hot fries on my tray beside the bottle of Coke. Breakfast, and Zack’s doughnuts, were a fading memory, and the food smells made my knees weak.

  I paid and got a fifty-cent piece in my change. The Blimpy cashiers are notorious for handing out weird money—fifty-cent pieces, Canadian quarters, two-dollar bills—and I suspect it’s to encourage customers to drop it into the tip jar by the register. I tossed the coin into the jar with a clank. The cashier, a young man, nodded thanks and turned to the next customer. I selected a table, inhaled the mouth-watering aroma of a fresh cheeseburger, and leaned in to take a succulent bite.

  “I knew it.”

  I dropped the cheeseburger. My elbow thrust sideways and connected before I co
uld register who was standing beside me. I heard a squeak and a thump as I spun in my chair, combat reflexes at the ready. Zack was kneeling on the floor, both hands buried in his groin. His face was contorted with surprise and pain.

  “Oops,” I said.

  “What’d you do that for?” Zack gasped. He was dressed in fresh clothes, and his hair was still damp from a recent shower. “Jesus.”

  “Sorry. I would have gotten your stomach if the chair was a little higher.”

  “Don’t sneak up on a woman, hon,” the cook called from the grill.

  Everyone in the place was staring at us. The women looked faintly amused, and the men, including the cashier, wore expressions of sympathetic pain. Zack gave several gasping breaths. I’ve always wondered what it must be like to have such vulnerable little thingies just hanging there, waiting for something to whack them, and what the pain might feel like. My curiosity is purely academic, of course—I don’t really want to know.

  It wasn’t academic for Zack. I finally reached down and helped him into a chair. His big yellow backpack was on the floor beside him.

  “You want some ice, hon?” the cook asked him.

  “No, thanks,” Zack said hoarsely. “Just a triple with cheddar and an order of fries. She’s paying.” He cocked a thumb at me.

  “I am?” I said.

  “Damn straight. Come to that, make it a quadruple, with a whole bunch of those expensive mushrooms on it.”

  I waved acquiescence to the cook and finally took a bite of my own burger. Oh yeah. Salty meat, tart pickle, tangy mustard. Heaven on a bun!

  “So what do you want?” I asked with my mouth full.

  “Lunch,” he said. “Us he-man photographers get hungry, too.”

  “Uh huh. I take it you found your bike. Why did you take off?”

  “I don’t get along with cops. They ask too many questions and they don’t like reporters.”

  I selected a fry so hot it singed my fingertips and dipped it in ketchup. “You ever been arrested, Zack?”